This Incredible Footage From a GoPro Attached to a NASA Rocket Will Blow Your Mind

In November 2015 NASA launched a slender test rocket from its spaceport in New Mexico. The rocket, TechCrunch reported, was owned by UP Aerospace and was launched as part of a NASA program called Flight Opportunities, which flight-tests space tech developed by the government as well as industrial and educational institutions.

A GoPro was strapped to the 20-foot SpaceLoft-10 rocket and the resulting video from the camera's trip into the upper reaches of the atmosphere has gone viral for a reason: it's absolutely breathtaking to watch.

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Just after it left the launchpad the rocket went through the required spin-stabilization phase, visually dizzying but necessary to maintain altitude control.

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Then it dropped NASA's small Maraia Earth Return capsule, which according to NASA's press release may well one day be "an inexpensive, autonomous International Space Station-based vehicle to provide on-demand return of small scientific and engineering payloads, or function as an ISS-deployed entry technology test bed."

There were additional experiments on board testing various cutting-edge avionics projects, but as you watch the video tech considerations vanish as you get a powerful sense of what its like to take such an epic ride to a point about 75 miles above the Earth.

There are plenty of both awesome and inadvisable ways to use first-person video footage — this has to be one of the coolest we've seen in a while.